Aspects of noncommutative gauge theories and their commutative equivalents

We discuss some exact Seiberg--Witten-type maps for noncommutative electrodynamics. Their implications for anomalies in different (noncommutative and commutative) descriptions are also analysed.Comment: 3 pages; Invited talk at the 11th Regional Conference on Mathematics and Mathematical Physics, IPM Tehran, May 2004. To appear in the conference proceeding

Covariant Anomalies, Horizons and Hawking Radiation

Hawking radiation is obtained from anomalies resulting from a breaking of diffeomorphism symmetry near the event horizon of a black hole. Such anomalies, manifested as a nonconservation of the energy momentum tensor, occur in two different forms -- covariant and consistent. The crucial role of covariant anomalies near the horizon is revealed since this is the {\it only} input required to obtain the Hawking flux, thereby highlighting the universality of this effect. A brief description to apply this method to obtain thermodynamic entities like entropy or temperature is provided.Comment: 5 pages; This essay was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2008 Gravity Research Foundation essay competitio

Interrogating Identity Construction: Bodies versus Community in Cynthia Kadohatas In the Heart of the Valley of Love

In an interview for the journal MELUS, Hsiu-chuan Lee claims that Cynthia Kadohata suggests her novel In the Heart of the Valley of Love does not directly take any specific ethnicity as its central concern, nor deal explicitly with the identity issue (165, 179). Despite these assertions by the author, In the Heart of the Valley of Love is mainly taught at the university level in Asian American Literature courses. While Kadohatas novel has been established within this specific canon of Asian American Literature, her novel deals with issues that resonate among all racial groups. This paper considers the ways in which Kadohata creates an imagined future not wholly detached from issues of race and identity, but where the conceptualization of race-based identity is conceived by means of self-fashioning and self-signifying. In the novels futuristic American society, concerns of class and the divides of wealth between the white richtowns and the multiracial majority may seem to be the central themes, but issues of race and issues of class become conflated in the novel, and Kadohata uses more subtle ways to discuss issues of racial difference. What Kadohata suggests through her novel In the Heart of the Valley of Love is not that racialized bodies cease to be of importance in American society, but that race as a critical factor in identity formation and categorization must be reframed by self-signification and social interactions

Excursus on Hapa; or the Fate of Identity

This paper focuses on the contradictions and tensions inherent in self-identification and oppositional identities. In the past twenty years, Hapa has emerged as an oppositional identity used by mixed-race Asian Americans. While many scholars have noted the tension of the term for its linguistic appropriation from the Native Hawaiian language, fewer scholars have concentrated their examinations on the ways in which the term reproduces the very notions it aims to subvert. This paper concentrates on the areas of contradiction inherent in finding and using a word of power and making that word into a recognizable identity